Smart energy (“SE”) devices and networks have been deployed in homes and businesses as utilities and consumers attempt to better understand and control energy use. SE networks are typically a collection of monitoring, control, and reporting devices located, for example, in a home. Typical SE devices include, for example, thermostats and water, gas, and electric meters. The SE devices generally implement one or more communications protocols to communicate with each other and ultimately the utility or consumer.
In order to safeguard utilities from incidental or malicious interference from SE networks, SE networks and SE devices are secured using various methods. One such method is to encrypt communications between the SE devices on a SE network. Typically, SE devices are preconfigured, by the manufacturer, with a symmetric cipher key, called a link key, to encrypt the SE device's communications until another key used by the SE network, often called a NetKey, can be given to the SE device after it joins the SE network. The ESI may also be mandated by an interested entity, such as a utility company, for operational reasons including security concerns.
A smart energy device joins the smart energy network through an energy services interface (“ESI”), which may also be known as an energy services portal (“ESP”), the ESI also communicating with a utilities' automated metering infrastructure (“AMI”) network. In order for the ESI to join a SE device to the SE network, the ESI needs to be configured with, at least, the SE device's link key. Typically this process is done by a human installer of the SE device. The installer may determine the SE device's information from the product packaging. The installer may then connect to the AMI network and input the SE device information for the given SE network which is typically identified by an ESI for the SE network. Typically, the AMI network may then push the SE device information down to the ESI. Then the installer activates the SE device which begins the joining process. For drivers specific to the SE device, the installer may also need to load these to the ESI in a manner similar to configuring the link key. This cumbersome process is then repeated for each SE device added to the SE network.